Tense platforming? Riveting, punchy action combat? Complex, thought provoking puzzles? Is this what we come to video games for? Of course not! It’s for the menus, those sweet, sweet collections of pixels that let us tailor our experience and commit crimes like turning off the music so you can listen to a podcast you’ll only half pay attention to. Well, that’s at least what Video Game Menu: The Game will have you believe, a video game about video game menus (perhaps I didn’t need to explain it to you, it’s kind of in there in the name).
“Are you tired of video games constantly pestering you with pointless things like challenges, levels or gameplay?” the game’s Steam page tongue-in-cheekily asks. “Have you ever dreamed about just pleasantly clicking through menu after menu? Then seek no further. You have come to the right place. In Video Game Menu: The Game, none of these distractions will ever bother you again.” The blurb ain’t lying to you either. Gameplay entirely consists of flitting around various menu screens and just… pressing buttons to see what happens.
Watch on YouTube
There are your standard options, like the graphics quality, v-sync, FPS targets, brightness and the like. And then it gets into the lightly absurd, like how you want your screen rotated, how bloated the game is, there’s a take off glasses switch (which I assume blurs the whole thing). That’s where the more absurd options come into play. The cursorphobic buttons option makes all of the other buttons run away from your cursor, making them harder to press. Airplane mode overlays a PNG of a cockpit across the entire screen. You can make it so that all the text and buttons immediately shrink as soon as your cursor approaches them.
This is, obviously, a rare comedy game, a reflection on the function of video game menus, or perhaps how they don’t function. It looks like some actual video games in the form of minigames can be found lurking within this menu simulator, presumably as a sort of testing ground for the nightmarish synthesis of options you burden yourself with. It’s all very silly, and not necessarily something that’ll keep you going for hours on end, but worth a punt if you need some levity in your life right now. You can pick up Video Game: The Menu on Steam right now.